


Not Even the Rain

by Schwoozie



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Late Night Conversations, One Shot, Prison, Rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 15:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6121699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schwoozie/pseuds/Schwoozie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes a while for Daryl to know things about himself, and when he does, not even the rain can wash that knowledge away—not even when he wishes it could.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Even the Rain

 

> _(i do not know what it is about you that closes_  
>  _and opens;only something in me understands_  
>  _the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)_  
>  _nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands_
> 
> — ee cummings

Daryl likes her in the rain.

He likes her anywhere, really; a fact he's only just begun to recognize in himself, like when he recognized he was part of the group and not the outside of it, or that his mama was going to go and go until she burnt herself up. He never paid much attention in school, but he knows there's poetry about this kind of shit; about an opening of the eyes of the soul, flocks of geese spreading wing.

He thinks about that as he stands at the door of the prison, wind whipping through his hair and into his eyes as he watches Beth snatch clothing down from the laundry line.

Daryl was sure he was the only one awake when the storm started pounding at the windows and walls of the prison. Usually he's good at knowing when a storm is coming—feels the titanium in his cheek tingle like it's picking up frequencies, telling him secrets—but this was a surprise one, blown in from the east. He'd been in the mess fletching arrows and trying not to think when he heard footsteps tearing past him; bare, pulled from their slumber, slapping against the grey concrete of the prison floor. He'd gotten up, of course; hefted his crossbow and hurried towards the footsteps, checking to see what they were running from.

He checked but there was nothing to find, so he turned his eyes forward, and followed; reached the front door of the prison left ajar, squinted into the pounding rain and saw her familiar silhouette, nearly swallowed by the blackness of the storm and the night as she yanked the clothes into the basket she carried; shirts and underwear and socks and jeans, most mended toward the point of no return, all borrowed from the dead. It's been too long to still be carrying anything belonging to before, save a ring or a necklace. Anything cloth had disintegrated long ago.

And these clothes could disintegrate too; flapping about in the pounding rain, they were soaked through long before Daryl reached the doorway. Probably even before the wind woke her from her sleep, the rain had done its damage.

But there she is—sweatpants and sweater clinging to her like a million tiny hands, dragging her towards the earth as she pulls down the clothes one by one, tosses them in the basket like the vessel itself isn't full enough of water for fish to swim through. Her movements are hurried, practiced, and he can imagine her mother in his place, standing at the door to the farmhouse with her dressing gown wrapped around her, waiting for her daughter to come inside and get dry.

And it worries Daryl for a moment—how soaked she'll be when she returns, how the chilly damp of the cells will leave her shivering. Daryl thinks about going to look for a set of fresh clothes for her but he decides to stay watching, as if the wind could sweep her away.

She's done in moments; clothes pulled down, pins flying, she spins around and hurries back towards the prison. She falters only a moment when she sees Daryl standing there; a hitch in her step, a move towards the knife he now sees tucked into her sweatpants— _good girl_ —but then she's accepted his presence and she's rushing again.

He steps aside so she can make it past him before he pulls the door shut, redoing the latch with a clang that would echo if not for the wind howling outside. He looks at her and she's pushing wet hair out of her eyes. It's down, ready for sleep, not pulled into its usual ponytail, and he wonders if she's ever considered cutting it in the same moment that he hopes she never does.

She laughs, a little breathless, sweeping the blonde strands off her forehead as water trickles down from her hairline.

“Think I saved anything?”

Daryl shakes his head, and she laughs again, looking down at the heaping basket. Daryl found that basket in the closet of some old house, half-filled with clothing that had been dirty for going on a year; it's wooden and woven and it's dripping just as heavily as she is.

“Guess I might as well lay it out somewhere.”

“I'll do it,” Daryl says.

She looks at him strangely, tilting her head and blinking to clear the raindrops from her lashes. “You don't have to do that.”

He shrugs, holding his arms out. “Weren't sleeping anyway.”

“I wasn't either,” she says. “I was writing in my journal and the rain started, and I remembered my mama, how she'd always send me out before storms to take down the laundry lines.” She smiles cheekily, passing the basket over to him. “Would've been nice to have the weather channel right about now.”

Daryl just grunts, hefting the basket—it's heavier than he expected—and turning to head back towards the mess. Beth quickly matches his step, wet feet squeaking a little on the cement.

They enter the room in silence. Daryl can feel her eyes sweeping over his little work station—the fletched arrows, the stalks awaiting his attention, the half-empty can of peaches he'd been munching on the side. He walks to one of the long rows of tables and sets the basket down, pulls out the first item of clothing—a woman's blouse with most of the buttons missing, useful for nothing more than a light sweater.

“What're you thinking? Just lay them out?”

Daryl grunts, doing just that; spreading the soaked-through blouse across the metal of the table, reaching in for the next item of clothing, laying that out too. He glances up with he sees Beth move to the other side of the table from him; begins reaching into the basket too, making her own line to mirror his.

“Y'ought'a get outta those clothes,” Daryl says. “Gonna get a fever.”

Beth shrugs, pulling out a pair of boxers that Daryl recognizes as ones that he often wears. It doesn't feel strange to see her shaking them out, adjusting the y-flap so the seams lie straight before draping them across the table.

“A few more minutes won't hurt,” she says.

“Make sure you quote yourself back to your daddy when he comes asking why I let you stay wet so long.” He isn't looking at her, but that seems like the kind of statement that would make her roll her eyes. He imagines her doing so. “Enough ways to get sick. Don't need no excuse.”

“Daryl, I'm _fine_ ,” she says. He looks up but she isn't looking at him, too busy untwisting a pair of jeans. He can see the puddle forming on the floor underneath her, and when her hand bumps his reaching into the basket he can see the goosebumps on the inside of her wrist. She's soaked and freezing but he ain't her daddy and that's another thing he's recognized in himself. That's an important one, and he isn't going to forget it. Not like she'd let him.

They go through the whole basket together, her and him; by the time it's empty she really is shivering, entire body trembling as she wraps her arms around herself, rubs them up and down.

“Thinkin' you should'a listened to me, huh?” He is looking this time and she does roll her eyes, but he can tell she knows he's right. She still doesn't make a move to leave him though. “Gonna go to sleep?”

“Don't think I can,” she says. She says it softly, like it isn't meant for him, but when she looks at him he knows it is. “Mind's saying too much, you know? It's why I have a journal. At least this way I'll remember I've had those thoughts. Makes it so maybe they won't happen again.”

“Whole world needs an exorcism,” he says.

He doesn't know where that comes from. Maybe it was something he was thinking about before he saw her in the rain. It couldn't have come from after; there are no gods or monsters in his head now.

But he thinks there must be in hers, because she's taking him seriously; frowning with a little knit between her brows that he wishes would go away.

“I dunno,” she says. Looking at him, then looking at him again, then looking towards the windows and the rain where it blots out the moonlight. “I always wondered about those. Saw _The Exorcist_ when I was way too young for it.” She looks at him, smirks. “Bet you liked that movie.”

Daryl finds himself smirking back. “In my house, never too young for something like that.”

Her look softens, but doesn't melt, and so he continues to watch her profile as she turns back to the rain. “In the Bible it isn't like that at all. At least, not how I read it. It's more like, the demon's gotten lost or something. Needs help finding its way home.” She shrugs, rubs at her own shoulders. “Maybe that's what happened. They got tired of waiting for someone to come looking for them and went on looking for themselves.”

“You're making the walkers sound like fucking Hansel and Gretel.”

Beth is quiet for a moment, then giggles, pushing her hair away from her face again. “Maybe I am getting sick.”

Daryl jerks his chin towards the cellblock, wishes they didn't have the table between them so he could touch her elbow, her wrist. “Get on then.”

“Fine.” Beth hugs herself again, rocking side to side. She looks up at Daryl from beneath her lashes. Her face has dried but a drop of rain still lingers on an eyelash, waiting its chance to fall. “Long as you get some sleep too.”

Daryl grunts, walking back towards his arrows, taking the seat that's barely cooled. “I'll sleep when I'm dead, girl.”

“Daryl.”

He looks up at her tone. Finds her not shivery and small, but ghostly; eyes wide and accusing as she hugs herself but doesn't rock, stares him down until he feels her shivers become his.

“Till I find my way home then.”

It takes a moment, but that seems to satisfy her; she allows herself a full-body shudder, breathing out a brisk _brr_.

“Guess I'll go get dry now.”

“Yeah.”

“G'night, Daryl.”

“Night.”

She doesn't turn back when she leaves; simply walks out the door, feet making their little squeaking noises.

He feels like he should run after her; tell her she shouldn't be barefoot when they don't know what kind of shit gets tracked around in here; ask if she's going to sleep or just going to bed, and if it's the second maybe she could change into dry clothes and stay with him a while; sit there in her quiet way as he fletches his arrows and loses his thoughts in the drumming of the rain.

But he doesn't go anywhere; turns back to his task, and is still at it when Carl stumbles in around dawn, all bed-head and gangly limbs, waving at Daryl before he snags his own can of peaches and drops down beside him, chewing loudly enough to drown the dregs of the storm to a whisper.

“What're all those clothes doing here?”

It hasn't been long enough for them to dry; Daryl suspects that when the rain stops completely, they'll go right back up outside, and Sasha will bemoan the missing pins and laugh when Beth with her bare feet steps on them in the grass.

“Ain't nothing for you,” Daryl says. “Go get your sister her bottle, she'll be up soon.”

Carl downs his peaches in a few gulps, then does as Daryl says, heating up the milk as more people trickle in. Several of them question the clothes, but the queries aren't directed at Daryl so he doesn't answer them; just gathers his arrows together and slips away before his skin begins to tingle under the weight of all those bodies.

He makes one stop on the way to his cell. Holds the arrows under one arm as he pulls her privacy curtain aside, making sure to keep himself between the gap and the building sunlight.

The sweater and sweatpants from the night before are hanging from the top bunk, making a second little curtain that throws her into shadows that it takes his eyes a moment to adjust to. When they do he sees her curled up beneath her blankets, breathing deeply. Her journal is open by her face on the pillow, and as she breathes the pages flutter.

He could go in and close the book. Pull the pen from wherever it's hiding, where it's like to poke her when she gets up. Set them both on her desk and watch her breathe for a bit before he goes to snag a nap before Rick wakes up and needs him.

He doesn't, though. Looks through her curtain for a few moments before pulling it back, pushing her solidly from view. From his thoughts, racing. How much he likes her there, curled up in bed, rain still tangled in the ends of her hair.

It isn't worth it. Like the clothes, he'll only be put out to dry again, and get soaked through in turn.

He recognizes that in himself too.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think :)


End file.
